Opening reception: Saturday, January 17, 2026, from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m.
Guillaume Lachapelle: Vanishing points (retrospective and new works)
1996 – 2026, 30 years of passion, discovery, and sharing
Text by Valeria Márquez Reynoso and Rhéal Olivier Lanthier
We still remember our first weeks on Notre Dame Street West. We were excited, full of energy and ready to take on the new challenges that lay ahead. Today, on the eve of our 30th anniversary, we look back with pride on how far we have come. Art Mûr is a dynamic and essential exhibition space on the Canadian art scene. We are aware that we owe the success of our organization to the many people who have joined us over the past thirty years to help us bring to life exceptional exhibition. Without these immensely talented artists and exceptional collaborators, we would not be who we are today. There are many artists and collaborators we would like to thank, but the list is too long to name them all. However, to those of you who have presented, written, worked and collaborated with us, know that your contribution is part of our history and that our success is also yours.
Thus, for our 30th anniversary, we are offering some of our artists the exhibition of their dreams, one that will highlight their years of accumulated creativity. And, at the same time, we are offering you the opportunity to discover the breadth of their contributions.
We are therefore kicking off this year of celebration with an artist who has been with our gallery since 2003, Guillaume Lachapelle. For more than 20 years, Lachapelle has continually invited us to enter parallel universes and to question our relationship with everyday life. Each new work offers a gateway to a disturbing and alienating world.
Lachapelle begins his career by creating wooden sculptures. His exhibition Project Roundabout (2006) offers a first glance into these objects emptied of all meaning, or rather, turned upside down. From the start, amusement parks and fairs have been part of his approach, offering a parallel to our routine and mundane lives, but distancing them from celebration to give way to an unsettling strangeness, leaving the viewer to their own devices. This is Lachapelle’s goal – to disorient and confuse us, to make us get out of our comfort zone. His rides are anxiety-inducing not because of the thrills they cause, but because of the feeling of impending disaster. His landscapes are often dystopian, without being in ruins. We therefore have the impression of being alone, awaiting the arrival of a transformative event.
As of 2009, 3D printing has become increasingly prominent in Lachapelle’s work. His exhibition Machinations (2010) reintroduced the theme of rides and inserted them in these ghost towns, these deserted landscapes. One could speak of parallel universes where almost everything seems intact, presenting the infinite possibilities of representation, of art, but also the limits of our own reality. Untitled (2011), Evasion (2010), and Fissure (2009) each present an entryway towards the unknown, possibly a world parallel to ours. We can find these passages between rows of books, creating a gap in our knowledge of the world around us and offering an escape. In the show Visions (2014), this path deepens and darkens. The infinite is combined with the unsettling strangeness and are represented through the use of one-way mirrors. A subway, a parking, an office – all placed in a space with no end, emphasizing our alienation from the rest of the world. In Night Shift (2016), these endless spaces are perpetuated. The work Lost in reflexion (2015) showcases a corridor between two human-sized rows of books. The title invites us to enter the space, to get lost, and to reflect on our surroundings and where we are headed. The empty parking lots and the interior of deserted buildings are reminiscent of horror movies, places with no escape.
In his last exhibition at the gallery, Extrapolations (2023), Lachapelle incorporates representations of his loved ones for the first time using photogrammetry . Although his older works included figures, it’s the first time they’re identifiable. However, to add to this sense of strangeness, Lachapelle accepts and appropriates glitches on some of these individuals, as is the case with Dom (2023). His loved ones interact with machines and technology, creating disturbing and disconcerting combinations. The Lovers (2023) seem about to inhale what is coming out of the heater, together but alone – or is this rather the moment when they realize the danger of their actions and the effects on their relationship? Lachapelle succeeds in representing alienation in this last work. He questions our dependence on technological objects and our use of them. A kind of mutation is taking place, chimeras are quietly coming to life, not animal ones, but mechanical chimeras – what could be more frightening?
Guillaume-Lachapelle